Over the summer, McSweeney's had a contest in which entrants were to use one of thirteen writing prompts to generate a 1,000-word short story. Here's the prompt I used: "Write a story that ends with the following sentence: Debra brushed the sand from her blouse, took a last, wistful look at the now putrefying horse, and stepped into the hot-air balloon."
As it turns out, I didn't win. But, here is my story, anyway.
The Clown and the Librarian
As a boy, Leon had often imagined what it would have been like to be a professional clown. When he was seven years old, he told his parents – investment bankers both – about his aspirations. When they stopped sobbing, they asked him if that he was certain about his dreams. He emphatically nodded “yes.” They took him out of Lawrence Q. DeLaney’s School for the Unusually Wealthy and enrolled him in New Jersey State Clown Academy (“Where boys are made into men, and then those men are made into clowns”). For the next ten years of his life, he ate, slept, drank, and breathed clowns. He was first in his class in juggling, and at his graduation, he received the school’s highest honor – the Golden Rubber Nose with Distinction – for his one-man pantomime performance of Antigone while riding a unicycle over a tightrope. The headmaster commented afterward that it would have made Sophocles himself weep.
But the New Jersey State Clown Academy was only the beginning. Leon managed to secure a scholarship that sent him to Great Britain’s Royal Jestering College (for, you see, “clowning” is called “jestering” over there), where he excelled in such fields as designing comically oversized shoes and fitting several people at once into a tiny car. After four years, he emerged a changed man. He decided he would best be able to use his jestering abilities for the good of mankind (rather than for evil, as some clowns had done in the past, but they were always stopped by the good clowns) and joined a circus back in the United States.
His sordid love affair with Debra would become the stuff of pulp biographies. She was not a clown, but the clown’s sworn enemy: a librarian. Who is to say what drew the clown and the librarian together? His love of honking horns and her love of peace and quiet should have split them immediately, but no: there was a magic between them, the kind of magic that existed only once every few hundred years. There was magic between Antony and Cleopatra, between Abelard and Heloise, between Napoleon and Josephine.
After a brief period of courting in which Leon gave Debra one of those never-ending handkerchief things, and Debra gave Leon his very own pair of glasses to wear on the end of his nose, the two were engaged to be married. The marriage would take place on a beach, under a circus tent. Leon would invite his parents and his circus colleagues; Debra would invite her parents (retired rock musicians) and her colleagues from the library.
On the appointed day, they went down to the beach – careful to avoid the trash and syringes – and prepared to get married. On the groom’s side, the fire-breather, the lion-tamer, and the snake-charmer. On the bride’s side, several neat and uniform rows of men and women wearing more or less the same colors, sitting quietly with their hands folded on their laps, looking straight ahead and paying attention. And in the back, Debra’s parents, screaming, “Dude! Righteous wedding!” and holding up their lighters.
They were married by the ringmaster. Both the bride and groom looked marvelous, she in her beige wedding gown and he in his striped tuxedo, comically oversized patent leather shoes, and his diamond-studded dress nose.
After the ceremony, they had a reception on the beach in which everyone ate mounds of wedding cake. “Debra,” said Leon, “After spending so much time with you, I know that you have a fondness for romance novels in which women are swept off their feet by long-haired European men with chests like tanks. In my small way, I would like to make that dream come true.” He left the reception and went behind the tent, bringing with him a beautiful new horse. “Once I start working out and growing my hair long, I’m going to ride up to you on this horse and sweep you away to parts unknown. I’m also going to take lessons from a dialogue coach so I have an Italian accent.”
“Oh, Leon!” said Debra. “I have a surprise for you! Knowing you as well as I do, I discovered your fondness for random assortments of colored fabric sewn together. So I did the only thing I could think of to do.” She went off to the other side of the tent and brought back a hot-air balloon that she had sewn together herself.
Everyone was so happy to see the new couple offer each other these wonderful gifts of love. Leon’s parents clapped quietly, while Debra’s parents hollered and held up their lighters.
In this was the mistake.
The fire-breather, so full from wedding cake, let out an enormous belch. His breath, laden with gasoline, ignited the flame from Debra’s parents’ lighters and created an enormous fireball that hit the horse head-on. The horse was so shocked at being hit by a fireball that it fell over, dead and on fire. The force of the flame threw everyone to the ground.
The guests could only stare at the horse as it burned on the beach. They looked from the fire-breather to Debra’s parents and back to the horse. Debra didn’t move. Leon did the only thing he could think of: he jumped into the hot-air balloon and started the gas.
“Debra, come on! We must get away from this tragedy! Oh, what folly there is in the circus! I should have been an investment banker! Debra! We must leave this place and never return! We’ll start a new life in the jungle, as missionaries!”
Debra brushed the sand from her blouse, took a last, wistful look at the now putrefying horse, and stepped into the hot-air balloon.
